Smartcat
Director of HR
Summary
Smartcat is a Series C, high-growth Agentic AI company building an AI-powered platform that enables enterprises to create hybrid workforces of humans and AI agents. The Director of HR will report to the VP of People and modernize global HR practices by embedding AI, scaling People Operations, and serving as the primary escalation point for HR matters across a distributed workforce. The role exists to align people strategy with business goals, improve talent processes, and strengthen the employee experience across 30+ countries.
What you'll do
Lead and evolve the bi-annual Talent Review process (including manager calibration, bias audit, KPI implementation, and 9-box assessment) with targets for full participation and strong employee/manager experience.
Identify, implement, and measure AI-driven improvements across PeopleOps to reduce manual workload and enhance employee experience.
Partner with business leaders as a strategic advisor to align people strategies with organizational goals and provide quarterly talent insights linking people metrics to business performance.
Oversee an HR Generalist and ensure effective day-to-day People Operations execution globally.
Act as first point of escalation for HR policies and procedures, employee relations, investigations, compensation, benefits (including global benefits), payroll, time away/LOA, and sponsorship topics.
Formalize and improve core PeopleOps processes such as onboarding, offboarding, benefits administration, and leave of absence workflows across multiple countries/entities.
Become a power user of the HR/ops tool stack and deliver 60-90-120 day and 12-month People roadmaps to People leadership.
Build strong relationships with internal and external stakeholders and foster culturally aware connections across a global team.
Requirements
Proven track record building scalable, AI-first, data-driven People Operations/HR functions across the full employee lifecycle (onboarding, employee relations, performance management, talent development, offboarding, training).
Strong capability using people data to drive decisions and communicate insights through storytelling (not just reporting).
Ability to operate strategically and tactically, switching between long-term planning and hands-on execution.
People management strength; able to coach, mentor, influence, push back appropriately, and handle difficult conversations.
Comfort operating in complex global environments (multi-country workforce, multiple entities), including handling investigations and sensitive HR escalations.
Ability to ramp quickly on a modern HR/ops tool ecosystem (e.g., Google Workspace, HiBob, Gusto, Slack, Notion, Zapier, Remote.com, Pave.com, ChatGPT and similar tools).
Conditions
Fully remote global team.
Must be located on the US East Coast or willing to work East Coast hours.
Highly preferred to be based in Boston, MA, with expectation to go into the Boston office at least once per week.
Relocation is not offered.
Work in a fast-scaling, AI-native organization with broad autonomy to build and modernize People Operations.